Gun permits are the public's business

February 12, 2013|By Ginger Stanley

Whenever there is an effort to deny the public access to records that today are freely available, it should automatically raise suspicions.

It is the public's business to know who has been given the legal authority to carry a gun concealed on his or her person. Anyone who has been involved in a disagreement with peers at work or neighbors needs to know the situation with which they may be dealing.

This is not a Second Amendment issue. It is about the public's ability to monitor how the government conducts the process, and it runs contrary to democratic principles of public oversight of government actions.

Openness, not secrecy, keeps government accountable to citizens and protects the public's interests. Access is the only way for citizens to know that permits are being issued properly and correctly.

This issue was raised in 2007, when then-Del. David A. Nutter asked the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council (FOIAC) to study access to records of issued concealed handgun permits. Numerous interested parties, including VPA, gun-rights activists and citizen groups, worked through the FOIAC committee process, leading to proposed legislation that was carried in 2008 by then-Sen. R. Edward Houck.

In 2008, nine bills, including the Houck bill emerging from the FOIAC, were introduced in the General Assembly. All were defeated.

The following year, Del. Nutter introduced legislation identical to the 2008 FOIAC proposal. The bill passed.

Effective July 1, 2009, the law prevents citizens' access to the statewide database of concealed handgun permits maintained by the Virginia Department of State Police.

This addresses the concerns raised about wholesale downloading of the information from that database. The law still permits a citizen, should he or she be willing to travel to a local clerk's office, to review concealed weapons permits at the local courthouse.

Court records are presumed open, and there is no reason to create a unique, closed category of such records.

At the same time, courts have inherent authority to seal records in sensitive cases, upon a proper showing, and to address situations such as stalking on a case-by-case basis.

Carrying a concealed handgun is a special privilege conferred by the state, and there should be a presumption that the identities of persons given this privilege are public information. The identities of other persons with state-granted privileges, such as lawyers and doctors, are presumed open. This should not be an exception.

Also, a concealed handgun permit is now a legally valid form of voter identification. As such, it must be public information.

As citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia, we have a right to information, and newspapers have a right to obtain that information on behalf of their readers when investigating a crime that has occurred in their community, or as a check-and-balance on persons who hold concealed handgun permits in that community.

When government records, whether in a filing cabinet or on a computer, become off-limits, we lose part of the freedom that makes us America.

And if our senators and delegates start limiting your right to know one thing today, what records will they cover up tomorrow?